


beating of hearts like the beating of drums

by larkgrace



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi, Multiple Universes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-05-08 09:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5492261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/larkgrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>05. He doesn’t know where he is, because before the whatever thing in his head, that thing that sort of lets him flip through his Keyblades and tells him how much magic he’s got, before that thing can tell him the name of this new world his lungs seem to shrink and his brain just kind of. Stops.<br/>06. “Poor baby,” Roxas says. “Need me to kiss it better?”<br/>“I’d prefer you avenge me,” Lea tells him, checking his fingertips for blood. “Kindly hunt down the bastard who taught her to throw a right hook. They did too good a job.”</p><p>[a collection of unrelated drabbles.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i.

The portal spits Sora out into a back alley, all dark purple-blue brick and shadows cast by the stark yellow moon hanging like a feeling in the sky. The heart-moon looks a little like the way Riku is, all cold and distant but brimming, actually glowing with something lovely and light, like Riku’s smile that comes as a reflection when Kairi challenges him to a race or when Sora makes a silly joke and it’s a nice view but the castle, Kairi (Riku? please, please) is so far away, it would be nice if Axel’s aim was a little better—

Axel is dead.

 _Oh god,_ Sora thinks, and his stomach does a bad twisty-thing that makes him realize if he had anything in his stomach the things wouldn’t be there for long. Axel is dead. Axel isn’t just dead, Axel is disintegrated, Axel is disappeared in little wisps of darkness, Axel is nothing. Axel is nothing. Axel is dead.

Sora’s step falters and he almost takes a tumble to the street. His lungs are frozen solid. Axel is dead. Axel is dead. Axel is—

dead, because he saved Sora, so that Sora could save Kairi (please, Riku) and—

“Axel,” Sora whispers, picking up his pace. “Got it memorized.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this in the middle of watching the kh2 cinematics, immediately after axel's apparent death scene, because i was also dying. i didn't expect to love axel/lea as much as i did.


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 02\. A different kind of sunset, a different kind of ice cream, and maybe they're different kinds of people now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so roxas and xion and ventus and aqua and terra are all gonna come back and be fine, right? that's definitely what's gonna happen?

The bed of the truck shakes a little as Axel (no, it’s Lea now) hops onto it, tossing a thick blanket into Xion’s lap. “It’ll get chilly once the sun goes down,” he says.

Xion buries her hands in the scratchy fabric. She doesn’t remember a time from before when she wasn’t wearing gloves—there probably wasn’t one—and while she still sometimes steals a pair of Sora’s fingerless gloves from his room, she’s trying to break the habit. Her bare hands still feel strange, though. “Thank you, Lea,” she says, smiling, and Lea’s answering grin looks like a victory.

Roxas appears between the lines of cars. (Somewhere several rows back Xion can hear Ventus’s voice, so much like Roxas, laughing and shouting at someone—maybe Sora, maybe Aqua or Terra. She tries not to pay too much attention. Tonight’s a night for _her_ friends.) He trots across the grass and leaps up to sit on the truck without his hands, because his hands are full of ice cream and French fries. “They didn’t have sea salt,” he says, scooting back and placing the large vanilla milkshake in front of him, easily in everyone’s reach. “But hey, Sora told me about this. It might taste similar.” Roxas takes a fry, dips it in the shake, and sticks the whole thing in his mouth. He closes his eyes and hums happily.

Xion tries one. It’s salty-sweet, just like she remembers, and the fry is warm under the ice cream. On Roxas’s other side, Lea grunts in satisfaction.

The air here smells like the ocean, a little like Twilight Town but without the smog. The island breeze is cool against her bare legs. Xion flexes her toes in her sandals—another new sensation, wearing something so unlike her boots—and leans into Roxas’s side. Lea wraps an arm around them both. (Skin contact is new, too. It’s a little overwhelming some days.) “I almost don’t want the movie to start,” Xion sighs, looking up at the huge screen across the field. “The sunset is so pretty.”


	3. iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 03\. She's just a reflection. Just a mirror. Nobody at all, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i started reading an amazing book called _boysgirls_ by katie farris. it's a book of modern myths and there's a story about a girl with a mirror for a face who just wants a mouth to eat. this kind of happened.
> 
> edit: after i published this chapter the first time around, i wrote up two companion drabbles for roxas and axel, so i added those in. the boy with one wing character is also from _boysgirls,_ but the finder of lost things is one i just made up.

xiv.

The Girl with a Mirror for a Face hides in her bedroom because she is tired of not being looked at.

(This is a partial lie. Many people look at her. Who has ever been able to pass a mirror without glancing? When she is not the Girl with a Mirror for a Face, she is the Girl of Many Faces—wide smiles and thick pursed lips and narrow frowns and mouths eating, always eating, food or words or lovers’ tongues. The Girl is very hungry, but she cannot keep these borrowed mouths long enough to take a bite of anything.)

The Girl with a Mirror for a Face sits cross-legged on her bed in the room that is not hers. The room belongs to an innkeeper, a man with silver hair and yellow eyes who offered her board for as long as he liked because he was so in love with the face he saw when he looked at her. She plays with popsicle sticks from the sidewalk and seashells from the shore where the smell of frying fish did not reach the nose she did not have. Her face shines with moonlight and streetlight and starlight. The streetlights look warm and safe and the moonlight looks cold and distant and the starlight looks like tears sparkling on slick silver cheeks. The Girl with a Mirror for a Face does not look like anything, or maybe she looks like everything, or maybe no one can tell which.

A boy appears outside her window and happens to glance in. He is very blond and has eyes that are blue like the bluest thing in the world, whatever that might be. There is a checkerboard pattern stretched across his shoulders and he looks like a handsome game piece carved of marble, or made in a cheap mold. A single white wing stretches out from his back. He glances at the Girl’s hands, first, wrapped in gloves, and the rest of her in a long coat. Her body does not matter as much as her slim silver nothingness.

The winged boy stops at the window and the Girl with a Mirror for a Face asks, “Who are you?”

The boy considers, since it’s a very good question and he can’t remember the answer right now. “I’m nobody,” he decides, and the Girl believes him. She does not feel like she has a face when he looks at her. “What’s your name?”

The Girl turns into starlight and moonlight again, while she thinks. It’s a question she hasn’t been asked in a long time, or for as long as she can remember, which is a long time for someone without a point of reference. She lacks a point of reference for most things. “My name is Xion,” she tells him.

 

xiii.

When he is speaking to a girl without a face through her bedroom window, Roxas is nobody, which is somewhat refreshing. When he is not being nobody, he has to be somebody, and the somebody people have decided to turn him into is the Boy with One Wing.

It’s a reasonable kind of somebody to make him, because Roxas has one wing. It’s a beautiful white-feathered dream of a thing with bones delicate as sugar glass and strong as the bonds that tie him to the ground. His dream-white feathers are stained from Roxas’s time spent sleeping in graveyards, curled up between tombstones that block the wind from whistling through his hair and reminding him that he is not really a boy and he is not really a winged thing. His younger brother is a prince and his older brother is a swan and the Boy with One Wing is a pitiful sight.

Sometimes, the Boy likes to stand on top of the clocktower and pretend that if he falls a second wing will sprout from his shoulder blade and carry him off into the sunset. He likes to pretend that he will be a true winged thing, a Boy who Flies, and that his thick human bones would not drag him to the cobblestones in the street below and shatter. He likes to pretend that passerby far below do not look up at the Boy with One Wing and whisper that he is very beautiful and act as though he does not have a true name. True names are for real people, and Roxas is not people. Roxas is a half-boy half-dream figment.

When he is with the Girl with a Mirror for a Face he is nobody, and when he is in the streets he is the Boy with One Wing, but when he is with the Finder of Lost Things he is just Roxas. The Finder of Lost Things is named Axel, which is not his true name, but Axel says he lost his name a long time ago. It is the one lost thing that the Finder of Lost Things has never been able to bring back. Axel does not mind much anymore. He says that he found Roxas, who was a lost thing, and Roxas is his favorite thing to have ever found.

 

viii.

The Finder of Lost Things goes looking for his name in a graveyard. The graveyard is a good place to look for things that you have not planned on ever really finding for a while now; Axel knows this because he is the Finder of Lost Things and an expert on returning things to where they are supposed to be.

He does not find his name. Instead, the Finder of Lost Things finds a very small girl with a long coat. She is standing in front of a tombstone with forget-me-nots scattered at its base and she is looking at the petals rather than at the grave marker. Axel knows this because the girl’s face is made entirely of blue flowers and trodden grass. He sees the edge of an ornate silver frame and knows that this is the Girl with a Mirror for a Face.

“What’s your name?” the Finder asks.

“My name is Xion,” the Girl says, and her face turns into distant trees and the edge of the faraway dusky sky. “My friend says you lost your name. Have you found it?”

“No,” the Finder says. He holds out a hand to the Girl, because he is the Finder of Lost Things, and he gives lost things homes when he can. “It is getting cold, and the dead make poor company for living people. Let’s go.”

Xion says, “I am not a real person,” but she takes his hand anyway. They walk past grave markers until they find the Boy with One Wing, curled up in the dirt and shaking in his sleep. His feathers are streaked brown and gray and many of them are falling out, making room for new dream-white feathers coming in, and the Boy cries out like it hurts. The Finder of Lost Things runs to him, and scoops up the Boy; the Boy’s star- and iron-heavy human bones weigh him down and his wing drags on the ground. The Boy’s pulse, usually fluttering at a double-quick bird’s pace, is slow now, and Axel says, “Roxas? What happened?”

Roxas does not answer, and sleeps on, but even in his dream he clutches at the front of Axel’s shirt and his cries silence themselves. Xion kneels in the dirt next to the Boy-shaped indent in the mud and picks up a lost thing. The Finder knows lost things, and knows that this is a very new one and a very old one. It is new because the Boy with One Wing has only just left it behind, and very old because it was lost by someone else a long time ago.

Xion holds out the heart, fluttering and pulsing with light, to Axel. “I think this is yours,” she says.


	4. iv.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 04\. Sora didn't go home, after the exam. Sora counted cracks in the plaster on the ceiling.

Sora didn’t go home, after the exam. Not after Traverse Town. (Not after the skip in his heartbeat, seeing the Dream Eaters—weren’t they only supposed to exist in the dream worlds?—but Xehanort didn’t show and Neku and the others were gone, and he was so glad that they had made it home that he almost forgot to be afraid.) He went back to the Tower and hugged Riku (and Kairi! Who punched him for being away for so long, which he deserved a little). He listened to Yen Sid explain the prophecy of the seven Guardians of Light and the clash with the Seekers of Darkness.

He lay awake in the room he was sharing with Riku for the night. Kairi was down the hall, and Mickey and Donald and Goofy had gone back to Disney Castle, and Lea wasn’t back from Radiant Garden yet. Sora counted cracks in the plaster on the ceiling. Twenty-two, some no longer than his pinky nail, the only ones he could see. There were probably more. Riku had better night vision. Sora shifted to hear the bedsprings creak. Twenty-two cracks in the ceiling, and a missing chunk of plaster on the wall above his head that looked like a lopsided heart if he squinted, maybe. Twenty-two and a lopsided heart and he shifted again, tried to make the lumpy mattress as uncomfortable as possible. Twenty-two and a heart in the dark—

“Sora?” A half-slurred groan. Riku’s hair shimmered like a halo in the moonlight, splayed across his pillow. His eyes shimmered across the room. Such a pretty color, blue and green and tropical like the island sky wished it could be. “You okay?”

Sora rolled to his side to face Riku. Something poked his shoulder through the mattress. “I…can’t sleep.” Didn’t want to. Was afraid to. Couldn’t say it, which was stupid, because this was Riku, he told Riku everything.

Bedsprings protested, _squeak squeak squeaaal,_ as Riku got up and padded across the floor. His bare feet made little _sh_ sounds as they slid across the stone floor, like he was too tired to pick up his feet properly. Riku sat on the edge of Sora’s lumpy mattress. “Scoot over,” he said, and when Sora had his back to the wall Riku stretched out, facing Sora, their knees touching. There was only one pillow, and their faces were close, like they were kids again and whispering so Sora’s mother wouldn’t catch them awake. “I’ve got you,” Riku said, and draped an arm over Sora, started drumming a rhythm on Sora’s back, _da-dum, da-dum,_ in time with Sora’s pulse. “It’s safe. No one will take your heart again, not tonight. Go to sleep.”

Sora yawned in agreement and slid down until he could fit his head under Riku’s chin. He nuzzled into the warmth of Riku’s throat. “I know,” he said, and closed his eyes. “They’d have to take it from you first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dream drop distance was delightfully gay. i don't actually remember writing this, but i'm glad i did.


	5. v.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 05\. He doesn’t know where he is, because before the whatever thing in his head, that thing that sort of lets him flip through his Keyblades and tells him how much magic he’s got, before that thing can tell him the name of this new world his lungs seem to shrink and his brain just kind of. Stops.

The Lane Between spits Sora out into a new world, and it’s cold. Like, _really_ cold, everything glittering with frost and his breath hanging in the air in thin clouds. A crisp layer of snow crunches under his shoes—can’t be more than half an inch—and he hears his friends’ feet shuffle, too, and the brisk wind ruffles his hair and bites straight through his clothes, which are far more suited to tropical climates than this…wherever. He doesn’t know where he is, because before the _whatever_ thing in his head, that thing that sort of lets him flip through his Keyblades and tells him how much magic he’s got, before that thing can tell him the name of this new world his lungs seem to shrink and his brain just kind of. Stops.

His brain stops, but, also it kind of kicks into overdrive, or at least he thinks it might, he can’t tell because his lungs aren’t working and whatever world this is it’s still one where he needs to _breathe_ and—he’s too cold, his limbs are frozen and he can’t move, even though he is moving, his hands are coming up to claw at his throat, but his mouth is frozen open, he’s frozen, his whole body is frozen. Dimly he hears his friends making noises that are concerned, maybe? Shouts. He can’t tell, his heartbeat is too loud in his ears. There’s a hand on his back, burning white-hot like a brand against the ice on his skin (there’s no ice, there’s no ice but there _is,_ he’s frozen he’s failed he’s going to die he’s going to die his friends are going to die)—Kairi appears in his peripheral but she looks wrong, older, her hair is blue—

He’s standing in a snowfield and he’s lying in a desert, and he’s going to die and his friends are going to die and Kairi’s hair is blue and she’s wearing shining armor, she looks like a blazing god holding him and shaking him and shouting a name (is it his? Is that his name?) and then she’s shouting past him, shouting for help maybe, Kairi’s always been good in a crisis because she’s so calm—she’s not though, she’s crying, there’s a storm overhead and there’s someone up there that Sora is terrified of losing but he knows he’s failed, he’s failed, he’s dying his friends will die _everyone will die because of him—_

The burning hand at his back shakes him, and from a lifetime and a thousand miles away he hears Riku shout, “Sora!”

It’s like a ripple in a lake, only the ripple leaves still waters, and sunshine. It’s like a tiny flame springs up somewhere in the middle of his sternum and the ice covering his body turns to mist, slowly, spreading from his chest all the way to his fingers, clutched around his throat, where he can breathe again. He kind of…falls, into Riku but that’s okay, Riku catches him, and Kairi fusses and somewhere in his ribs a voice reverberates. It’s not a voice he recognizes but it’s one he knows, if that makes sense, and the voice is saying _Sora, Sora,_ and Sora thinks the voice might be crying? But, he thinks, they’re happy tears. Liquid light. Little drips of hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after i watched bbs i got sad about ventus. then this happened. enjoy!


	6. vi.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 06\. “Poor baby,” Roxas says. “Need me to kiss it better?”
> 
> “I’d prefer you avenge me,” Lea tells him, checking his fingertips for blood. “Kindly hunt down the bastard who taught her to throw a right hook. They did too good a job.”

Lea levels his Keyblade at Kairi and smirks. “Bring it, Princess,” he says, and Destiny’s Embrace appears in Kairi’s hand in a flash of light. She steps back with her right foot and brings her Keyblade behind her head, elbow up in the air, and on her left arm a golden shield shimmers into existence, which she raises in front of her chest. She bends her knees, tosses her head to flick her bangs out of her eyes, and grins right back at Lea.

“Whenever you’re ready, Hot Stuff,” she says, and on the sideline Sora cheers wildly. Riku is more somber, looking ready to jump in the second it looks like Kairi might be in actual danger, which Lea knows that Kairi a) has definitely noticed and b) does not appreciate. Out of the corner of his eye, Lea can see Roxas perched on top of the low stone wall, minimally interested in the fight, too busy talking to Naminé. (Lea sees the glimmer of munny being placed into a pouch, and wishes he could say with certainty who Roxas is betting on.)

Lea charges. He feels good about himself for the first half dozen steps, and then Kairi swings her shield out in an arc, knocking his Keyblade aside. Destiny’s Embrace comes down to knock his knees out from under him. Lea lands flat on his back, his hands coming up—now empty, his concentration broken and his Keyblade gone back into the mental void—to at least try to bring Kairi down with him. She falls sideways, her sword and shield vanishing with a shimmer as she tumbles across Lea's stomach and lands on her shoulder, her knees on his chest and her torso perpendicular to his waist. She rolls off and up her her knees as Lea scrabbles to get up, and—

Her knuckles connect square on with his nose. She put enough force into the punch that the follow-through sends her sprawling onto her stomach, but it doesn’t matter, because Lea is laid out flat again and groaning. He brings up a hand to gingerly press his nose, which he regrets pretty much instantly.

Sora whoops, “That’s how it’s done!” Riku looks proud. Naminé smiles and shakes her head as she hands over the munny bag, placing it in Roxas’s expectant hand.

“Ouch,” Lea drawls, pointedly staring at Roxas, who does not look sympathetic at all.

“Poor baby,” Roxas says. “Need me to kiss it better?”

“I’d prefer you avenge me,” Lea tells him, checking his fingertips for blood. “Kindly hunt down the bastard who taught her to throw a right hook. They did too good a job.”

Riku looks suddenly sheepish. Naminé perks up. “Can you teach _me?”_ she asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone asked for axel getting punched. i was happy to oblige! except it's lea, not axel, and it's set in some idyllic universe where all the nobodies come back. i think i wrote this when i was in the middle of watching kh2, so excuse any retcons.
> 
> the fighting style kairi is using is called oldcastle. it's fun!

**Author's Note:**

> i'm taking requests! tumblr @ [trustyourpartner](http://trustyourpartner.tumblr.com)


End file.
